before her, while Miss Franklin expressed her
admiration of the napery and china which the Mosses had helped her to
select.

It was glorious to go romping with the dogs about the garden, and most
intoxicating to mount her horse and ride away upon the mesa, mad with
speed and ecstatic of the wind. No one could have kept pace with her
that first day at home. She ran from one thing to the other. She
unpacked and spread out all her treasures. She telegraphed her mother
and 'phoned her friends. She gave direction to the servants and examined
every thing from the horses' hoofs to the sewing-machine. She went over
the house from top to bottom to see that it was in order. She was crazy
with desire of doing. Her mid-day meal was a mere touch-and-go lunch,
but when at last she was seated in her carriage with Haney and Miss
Franklin she fell back in her seat, saying, "I feel kind o' sleepy and
tired."

"I should think you would!" exclaimed her teacher.

"Of all the galloping creatures you are the most wonderful. I hope
you're not to keep this up."

Haney put in a quiet word. "She will _not_. Sure, she cannot. There'll
be nothin' left for to-morrow."

Their ride was in the nature of a triumphal progress. Many people who
had hesitated about bowing to them hitherto took this morning to unbend,
and Mart observed, with a good deal of satisfaction: "The town seems
powerful cordial. I think I'll launch me boom for the Senate."

At the bank-door, where the carriage waited while Bertha transacted some
business within, he held a veritable reception, and the swarming
tourists, looking upon the sleek and shining team and the gray
mustached, dignified old man leaning from his seat to shake hands,
wondered who the local magnate was, and those who chanced to look in at
the window were still more interested in the handsome girl in whose
honor the president of the bank left his mahogany den.

In truth, Bertha had won, almost without striving for it, the
recognition of the town. Those who had never really established anything
against her seized upon this return as the moment of capitulation. There
was no mystery about her life. She was known now, and no one really knew
anything evil of her--why should she be condemned?

In such wise the current of comment now set, and Mrs. Haney found
herself approached by ladies who had hitherto passed her without so much
as a nod. She took it all composedly, and in answer to their invitations
bluntly a